The problem with stereotypes though, is that by stereotyping a group of people, you are stripping those people of their individuality in favor of broad generalizations that reinforce your own position and the underlying message usually is "I am better than those people"

It also leads to people clinging to arguments such as "but not all people..." from their groups while going "all the people..." from other groups of people.

Brodudes: Relax, it's just a video game! Stop getting so offended by trivial things and stop reading politics into everything!

Also brodudes: MAKING THE GHOSTBUSTERS FEEEEMALES IS LITERALLY SHITTING ON MY CHILDHOOD AND IS AN EXAMPLE OF HOLLYWOOD'S AGENDA TO PUSH "EMPOWERED INDEPENDENT WOMEN WHO DON'T NEED NO MAN" DOWN OUR THROATS ALSO IT'S ABOUT ETHICS IN VIDEO GAME JOURNALISM

Yet the white knight rescuing the fair maiden are traditional archetypes in western culture. You can disagree with it, but they are the traditional gender roles in that scenario. Do we need to change those roles? Okay, I'm sure we need to update them for the modern world, but let's remember that it's a cartoon video game. He's eating mushrooms and growing taller and jumping on turtles and collecting shiny coins on his way to attack an even bigger turtle. It's more of an endorsement of psychedelics for children than it is a reinforcement of traditional gender roles.

Wrong, those are two different things.
The traditional gender role is a set of conventions as to what behaviors should be accepted in society by individuals of both genres. And those guidelines change based on culture and times, the role of women in the 1900s is fundamentally different from the role of women in 2017.
Yet, we're asked to accept women should still be portrayed as damsels in distress now, because that's how it was since the 1900's.

While I do agree Mario is probably the least of our worries, you obviously don't know what it's like being a young girl and wondering why can't you play as the princess and why doesn't she do anything in the game other than wait to be rescued.

True, the problem isn't the trope itself. The problem is that it's been the major way in which women have been portrayed for a long time.
While I agree it has improved in modern times, I personally would still like to see even more variety than we have now.

As someone who plays the Mario games and loves that series, we don't specifically need to change Mario. What we need is more games that are aimed towards girls that are every bit as good as the games geared for boys without being condescending as to what a girlie game is supposed to be.

Someday, with a little luck, someone's gonna corner fuzz when he least expects it, and just grab him by the pussy. Because apparently that's what it's gonna take for him to understand why folks are a lil sensitive these days.

Until then, it strikes me as pointless trying to educate him about sexism